Is your Market Research Technology Invisible?

When it comes to market research technology, you have a wide array of options – so many, in fact, that it can seem overwhelming. From platforms that handle end-to-end processes, to specialty solutions that handle just one piece of your insights puzzle, and everything in between, there are new options cropping up on nearly a daily basis. While your decision is ultimately based on a huge number of factors, there is one important question to ask yourself: Will the technology be “invisible”?

Defining invisible technology

Invisibility is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when you think about technology. Let me explain with this analogy. Let’s picture technological invisibility from an automotive perspective. For many years, cars were, by and large, equipped with manual transmissions. Drivers had to physically change the gears – both effort and training was required. Automatic transmissions are essentially an invisible innovation. Whereas before drivers had to know when to change gears and then physically change them, cars now do it for us. Drivers can now, instead, focus on achieving the desired outcome of moving from one location to another, quickly and conveniently.

The overall premise of automation is one aspect of invisibility, carrying out a task without feeling like you’re using technology. When people experience such innovation for the first time, you often hear a “Wow, that’s cool” or a “I can’t believe I’ve been doing it the long way all this time”. For the market researcher, the tasks we’re talking about are primarily the generation of insights; the understanding of consumers.

Why do we have so much visible technology then?

Firstly, visibility of technology is all relative. When innovation strikes, that new way of doing things will be ‘invisible’ for users when compared to the older way of doing things. Thinking about the car analogy, self-driving vehicles are the next step in that example, making the very act of driving redundant – visible if you will. So you can’t stand still.

From a software vendor’s perspective, there’s a never-ending balance between delivering features and functionality that the market wants while solving a particular need and pain point as simply and as seamlessly as possible. Technology in and of itself is never the whole answer, it theoretically should improve the lives of employees and consumers.

So what went wrong? Somewhere along the way technology itself became the primary focus, rather than the challenge it was solving. To meet shareholder expectations, solutions quickly became bloated with unnecessary features and upgrades, becoming buggy and difficult to manage. This all feeds into an increasing visibility, with users struggling to operate the software and organizations spending more time justifying its implementation. And both of these come at the expense of optimizing and using the software to deliver what it’s actually there for – improving outcomes for the business and its customers.

Types of market research technology

Moving on, what are the types of technology that you can find in our industry? There are solutions that run the gamut, addressing all steps of the market research and insights process. While the total number of steps is up for discussion, I’ve settled on the number five for the sake of this article:

1. Defining the challenge or business problem, and secondarily, designing technology to solve it. This two-part step is typically reserved for humans, but there are frameworks, templates, and generative AI products available that can cut down on repetitive work. We will soon start to see more technology solutions addressing this step.
2. Data collection has seen a huge injection of venture capital over the past five years, and a flurry of mergers and acquisitions. The technology used during this stage ranges from online survey collection platforms to newer methodologies like agile neuroscience platforms, all the way to automated and DIY sample and panel sourcing. Solutions that aid with data quality and fraud prevention also land in this category.
3. Investigating the data is another step with plenty of new and existing providers, as well as larger business intelligence (BI) players entering the space. This step can be tricky to navigate. Those in the market for analysis software need to be mindful of how well solutions can process complex market research data, especially at the respondent level.
4. Reporting is one area where market research technology is a little light, but not for want of trying. Many insights teams still prefer crosstabs and PowerPoint decks over more useful and streamlined approaches such as alerts and interactive dashboards. And this is one possible reason for the reduced number of viable alternatives to PowerPoint decks. In saying that, this dynamic is changing as demands for speed, accuracy, and on-demand insights continue to rise.
5. And lastly, there is acting on the data. This is clearly the most important, because all of the preceding steps are rendered redundant if the business does not act on the insights generated. Technology can’t really help in this phase yet, though it’s only a matter before someone creates something that can help.

The visibility of all-in-one vs fit-for-purpose market research technology

One thing to keep in mind when considering which approach your organization takes to its technology is one of visibility. All-in-one technology platforms (think Tableau, PowerBI, and so on) are, as the name suggests, very versatile systems that can be used across many different facets of business. However, their versatility often comes at the expense of how particular cohorts, roles, or users operate.

All-in-one systems are often preferred by IT and procurement teams from larger corporations. They are comfortable and familiar, and they’re already paying for licenses that cover other portions of the business.

On the other hand, fit-for-purpose technology platforms are much narrower in scope, focusing on an industry, niche, or problem. These systems may be overlooked because they add another technology layer into the organization. However, the benefit of choosing a fit-for-purpose solution is that it can help organizations achieve their desired outcomes in a shorter period of time or with greater confidence (and sometimes both).

Final reflections on the visibility of our technology

There’s nothing more frustrating than having to painstakingly work around the technology stack in your organization, which is often the case for insights professionals attempting to use BI tools to do their jobs. The extra time spent struggling with visible technology means researchers aren’t able to do what we want to do most: spend more time investigating their data, asking questions of their findings, diving deeper, and feeding their curiosity. What we really want is technology that renders previously lengthy tasks invisible, so we can get on with our jobs.

One of the most appealing aspects of fit-for-purpose market research technology is the ability to share findings and reports with multiple stakeholders. As more and more clients and leaders are demanding to have a role in interacting with the data so they can make better, more informed decisions, solutions that allow this level of data democratization will become second nature.

Lastly, any technology implementation will require behavioral change. Things will need to be learned and other things will need to be unlearned. While learning curves can feel challenging, once we overcome them there’s no going back. Yes, technology should be invisible but it isn’t always. We just have to be alert to vendors who are committed to ensuring their software always is. And when technology is invisible, it doesn’t just make our lives as market research and insights teams much easier, most importantly, it makes our jobs far more enjoyable too.